Investing for Generations: A History of the Alliance Trust

Charles Munn

Abstract

This book provides a full history of the Alliance Trust, a Dundee-based financial institution that is one of Scotland's oldest and most interesting companies and the UK's largest general investment fund. The book describes how the Alliance Trust began life in Dundee in 1888 as a mortgage company financing farmers in the American West. It goes on to explain how the Trust inherited the business of several Dundee-based mortgage companies that had lent, wisely and unwisely, on large and small tracts of land in Oregon, Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico. The book shows that the Trust was an industry lea ... More

This book provides a full history of the Alliance Trust, a Dundee-based financial institution that is one of Scotland's oldest and most interesting companies and the UK's largest general investment fund. The book describes how the Alliance Trust began life in Dundee in 1888 as a mortgage company financing farmers in the American West. It goes on to explain how the Trust inherited the business of several Dundee-based mortgage companies that had lent, wisely and unwisely, on large and small tracts of land in Oregon, Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico. The book shows that the Trust was an industry leader from the outset but that, unlike some of the companies it had acquired, it soon built a reputation for stability and prudence. It then describes how the Trust discovered oil on some of the land that it owned in the USA and how the economic difficulties of the inter-war years necessitated a change of business strategy, with the Trust making the transition from lending on mortgages to investing in securities. It details how the Trust enjoyed the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s, fought its way through the troubles of the 1970s and, when better times returned in the 1980s, extended its reach, first into asset finance and then into retail savings and investment products.